Understanding Risk Balkans ConferenceSeptember 17–19, 2018 | Belgrade, Serbia

PR

OG

RA

M

Monday, September 17, 2018

Yugoslav Film Archive Museum

09:00–13:00 Disaster-Resilient Balkans: Empowering Young Professionals

City Hall

13:00–15:00 Registration

15:00–16:00 Welcome StatementsOpening RemarksKeynote Speech

16:00–16:30 Coffee

16:30–18:00 Ignite Presentations

18:00–20:00 Reception

Tuesday, September 18, 2018

Yugoslav Film Archive Museum

08:00–09:00 Breakfast

09:00–10:30 SESSION 1 Room A

Demystifying the Main Growth Drivers of the Catastrophe Insurance Market

SESSION 2

Room B

Flood Risk Mapping within the EU Flood Directive: No Data, No Result?

10:30–11:00 Coffee

11:00–12:30 SESSION 3

Room A

DIY Resilience!

SESSION 4 Room B

Transboundary Sava River Cruise with Views on Successful Multi-Hazard Early Warning Advisory Systems

12:30–14:00 Lunch

Schedule at-a-glance 14:00–15:30 SESSION 5

Room A

The Role of Social Protection Systems in Preparing for and Responding to Disasters

SESSION 6

Room B

Flood Protection Is Everyone’s Responsibility

15:30–16:00 Coffee

16:00–17:30 5x15: Five Outstanding Individuals Have 15 Minutes to Tell Stories about Risk

Wednesday, September 19, 2018

Yugoslav Film Archive Museum

08:00–09:00 Breakfast

09:00–10:30 SESSION 7

Room A

Seismic Risk in Multi-Family Apartment Buildings: Engineering, Social, Financial, and Policy Implications

SESSION 8

Room B

Getting Informed: Disaster and Climate Risk Tools for Improved Decision Making

10:30–11:00 Coffee

11:00–12:30 SESSION 9

Room A

Advancing the State of Open Data and Its Use for DRM in the Balkans

SESSION 10

Room B

Integrating Risk Assessments in Road Asset Management

12:30–14:00 Lunch

14:00–15:30 SESSION 11

Room A

Enhancing Resilience: From City to Asset Scale

SESSION 12 Room B

From Assessing Risk to Managing Risk: The Science-Policy Interface

15:30–16:00 Coffee

16:00–16:30 Keynote Closing

16:30–17:00 Closing Remarks

Monday, September 17, 2018

09:00–13:00

Disaster-Resilient Balkans: Empowering Young Professionals Young professionals and researchers have a vital role to play in understanding

and managing disaster risk in the Balkan region, now and into the future. They

have the motivation and drive to innovate but need capacity-building oppor-

tunities to capitalize their potential and support their growth as multicultural

and interdisciplinary thinkers.

This event brings together a community of young professionals, researchers,

and students working on disaster risk management (DRM) from all parts of

the Balkans, gives them the space to share knowledge on DRM across dis-

ciplines and geographic borders, and builds their capacity to think creatively

and innovatively in addressing challenging DRM issues. The event will do this

in four stages: it will outline current youth initiatives in the DRM sphere; lead

participants through a creative networking exercise to identify the challenges

for youth engagement in DRM in the Balkans; engage participants in an in-

teractive role-playing game on DRM in the Sava River Basin; and finally give a

selection of young researchers the opportunity to pitch and get feedback on

their DRM research.

15:00–16:00

Welcome Statements

Representative, European Union

Representative, World Bank

Representative, Government of Serbia

Opening Remarks

Representative, Government of Serbia

Keynote Speech

Zoran Vojinovic is an expert in urban water systems, risk

assessment, climate change adaptation, and hydroinformatics

who works for the IHE Delft Institute for Water Education

in the Netherlands. He has over 23 years of practical and aca-

demic experience working in Europe, Asia, New Zealand, Aus-

tralia, Central and South America, and the Caribbean. His pub-

lications on urban hydroinformatics have led to a paradigm shift within the field.

He holds the position of Honorary Professor at the Centre for Water Sys-

tems at the University of Exeter (UK) and is also Visiting Professor at the

Technical University of Munich (Germany), Adjunct Professor at the National

Cheng Kung University (Taiwan, China), Visiting Professor at the School of Civil

Engineering University of Belgrade (Serbia), and Guest Faculty at the Asian

Institute of Technology (Thailand).

Vojinovic has worked closely with international and national donors and de-

velopment organizations, including the European Commission (EC), the Asian

City HallYugoslav Film Archive Museum

Development Bank (which has recognized him as a Water Champion), the

World Bank, and the United Nations Development Program. He has also ad-

vised governments on water and wastewater management, flood risk miti-

gation, and climate change adaptation. He leads the EC-funded FP7 PEARL

project, which brings together 24 international partners to develop adaptive

and resilient sociotechnical risk management measures and strategies for

coastal cities subject to extreme hydrometeorological events. He also leads

the EC-funded RECONECT project, a collaboration of 37 international partners

working to develop and demonstrate innovative large-scale nature-based solu-

tions for hydrometeorological risk reduction across Europe, Asia, Central and

South America, and the Caribbean.

Tuesday, September 18, 2018

SESSION 1 Demystifying the Main Growth Drivers of the Catastrophe Insurance Market

09:00–10:30 Room A

The session will review the core insurance products and insurance technologies developed under the ongoing World Bank Southeast Europe Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility Project. In addition, the session will discuss the role of public policy and regulatory environment in promoting catastrophe insurance as an al-ternative means of post-disaster risk financing. Specifically, the session will cov-er (i) innovative climate risk insurance products—at both micro and macro levels; (ii) insurance IT technologies that enable clients to buy insurance products from the web with only a few clicks; (iii) web-based public information tools such as CATMonitor that help homeowners assess the disaster vulnerability of their homes; and (iv) the role of public policy, legal, and regulatory environments in facilitating the growth of insurance penetration.

Moderator

Eugene Gurenko, Lead Insurance Specialist, World Bank

Speakers

Marijana Lemic-Saramandic, Chief Underwriting Officer, Europa Re

Nadica Jovanovska Boshkovska, Head of Representative Office of Europa Re, Republic of Northern Macedonia

Goce Vangelovski, General Manager, Croasig Osiguranje, Republic of Northern Macedonia

Slavica Radovanovic, Head of Claims, Europa Re

Andrej Teshler, Chief IT Officer, Europa Re

Klime Popovski, President, Insurance Supervisory Agency of Northern Macedonia

Tuesday, September 18City Hall

Tuesday, September 18

SESSION 2 Flood Risk Mapping within the EU Flood Directive: No Data, No Result?

9:00–10:30 Room B

The session on the EU Flood Directive and flood risk mapping will focus on the question of how to carry out flood risk assessments in a data-poor environment such as the Western Balkans and surrounding areas. But is the lack of data really a problem? Are we too focused on digital data? Do we undervalue other information sources? In this session, key players from the Western Balkans will share their experiences and lessons learned, with case studies on Serbia, Croatia, Poland, and Slovenia. Since EU flood risk mapping occurs on a six-year cycle, these experiences and lessons can be applied in the next mapping round(s).

Moderators

Mathijs van Ledden, Senior Disaster Risk Management Specialist, World Bank

Darko Milutin, Disaster Risk Management Specialist, World Bank

Speakers

Merita Borota, Senior Advisor, Directorate of Water, Serbia

Janusz Zaleski, Professor, Institute of Meteorology and Water Management, Poland

Darko Barbalić, Senior Engineer, Hrvatske Vode, Croatia

SESSION 3 DIY Resilience! 11:00–12:30 Room A

This session will highlight different citizen-led initiatives that are currently taking place in large urban areas and that focus on raising awareness of “dormant” earthquake risks by crowdsourcing risk information and galvanizing preparedness efforts at a local level. To generate insightful lessons learned and share best practices, this session will dig into the following concerns (among others):

• Opportunities and long-term ownership. How can citizen-led initiatives gen-erate momentum, incentivize participation, and build trust in a sustainable manner?

• Flexible collaboration and role of technological innovation. What are the op-portunities and limitations of partnering with a wide range of stakeholders (municipal authorities, civil protection, academic institutions, local businesses)?

• Community networks and social inclusion. Given the variety of participants in each initiative, how can these initiatives ensure that the different needs of vulnerable groups (seniors, people with access and functional needs, people living with chronic conditions, infants and children, etc.) are considered and prioritized?

Moderator

Margaret Arnold, Senior Social Development Specialist, World Bank

Speakers

Lejla Hadzic, Executive Director, Cultural Heritage without Borders, Albania

Olivia Vereha, Cofounder/Chief Operations Officer, Code for Romania, Romania

Mihai Șercăianu, Director, MKBT: Make Better, Romania

Yugoslav Film Archive Museum

Tuesday, September 18

SESSION 4 Transboundary Sava River Cruise with Views on Successful Multi-Hazard Early Warning Advisory Systems

11:00–12:30 Room B

This session will explore technical and coordination issues for developing and operating transboundary multi-hazard early warning systems. It will share les-sons learned from experiences in the Sava River basin (covering Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovenia) and from the scale-up to the South-East European Multi-Hazard Early Warning Advisory System (SEE-MHEWS-A). Critical issues to be addressed include the agreements and technical processing needed for transboundary data and forecast sharing.

Moderator

Daniel Kull, Senior Disaster Risk Management Specialist, World Bank

Speakers

Sari Lappi, Project Coordinator, World Meteorological Organization (WMO)

Mirza Sarac, Advisor, Protection against Detrimental Effects from Waters and Extraordinary Impacts on the Water Regime, International Sava River Basin Commission (ISRBC)

Beatriz Revilla-Romero, Flood Foresight Project Manager, JBA Consulting

Michael Staudinger, Director, Austrian Central Institute for Meteorology and Geodynamics (ZAMG)

Jugoslav Nikolic, Director, Republic Hydrometeorological Service of Serbia (RHSS)

Discussant

Imra Hodzic, Flood Risk Management Specialist, Deltares

SESSION 5 The Role of Social Protection Systems in Preparing for and Responding to Disasters

14:00–15:30 Room A

The aim of this session is to better understand how we can improve social pro-tection outcomes for the most vulnerable population during and in post disas-ter situations. Disaster responsive social protection is an emerging concept in the Balkan region. While some elements of disaster response are integrated in the countries’ social protection legislation, systematic crisis responses remain underspecified and underdeveloped. The evolution of disaster responsive social protection has principally been a by-product of the response to crisis situations. The social protection systems have demonstrated considerable crisis response capacities. This has been evidenced in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis when some countries in the region expanded the social assistance coverage of the population to include newly targeted groups or in the institutional support provided during the devastating floods and more recently with the arrival of a large share of refugees. These and similar responses signal that the countries’ social safety nets have the potential to adapt and possibly mitigate the adverse impacts of natural disasters ex ante and to build resilience. By drawing the les-sons from the recent experience with earthquakes in Mexico, the discussion will focus on ex ante adaptations in the social protection information system for im-proved planning and response to disasters. We will learn about the role that the social inclusion program (PROSPERA) played in responding to the earthquakes. Within this context, we will discuss different options for adapting the countries’ social safety net programs.

Moderator

Sandra Nedeljkovic, Deputy Director, Public Investment Management Office (PIMO), Serbia

Speakers

Luis Iñaki Alberro Encinas, Director General, Integrated Social Informa-tion System (SiSi), Mexico

Selene Salomón, Director, Directorate of Geostatistics, Analysis and Evalua-tion, PROSPERA Social Inclusion Program, Mexico  

Yugoslav Film Archive Museum

SESSION 6 Flood Protection Is Everyone’s Responsibility14:00–15:30 Room B

This session will present insights into recent initiatives, new technologies, and research results aimed at decreasing flood risk in the Balkans. Disaster management authorities at all levels of government need better situational overviews, vulnerability analysis, and urban water management systems. Cli-mate change projections indicate an expected increase in the frequency and intensity of floods. In order to decrease predicted adverse effects of floods, Balkan countries need to increase risk awareness and prevention capacities of local communities, citizens, and (in particular) vulnerable populations.

The session will look into complex interactions between flooding and society, as highlighted by conceptual mathematical models that describe economic decisions related to long-term flood protection strategies and impact-based forecasting of extreme weather events. It will also look at the response, recovery, and di-saster risk reduction actions taken by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH); at the OECD mission to Serbia and the DRAS (Disaster Risk Analysis System) for authorities and individuals; and at the We4DRR network (Women Exchange for Disaster Risk Reduction) that seeks to promote gender-sensitive policies in disaster risk management.

Moderator

Christian Resch, Managing Director, Disaster Competence Network Austria

Speakers

Aida Hadzic-Hurem, Disaster Risk Reduction Project Manager, UNDP Bosnia and Herzegovina

Olivera Zurovac-Kuzman, National Environmental Affairs Officer, OSCE Mission to Serbia

Reinhard Perfler, Vice-Head, Institute of Sanitary Engineering and Water Pollution Control, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna

Michael Freiberger, Doctoral Student in Technical Mathematics, Vienna University of Technology

Annegien Tijssen, Flood Risk Management Advisor, Deltares

5x15: Five Outstanding Individuals Have 15 Minutes to Tell Stories about Risk

16:00–17:30 Auditorium

Lučka Kajfez Bogataj is the Head of the Centre for Agro-meteorology and Professor of Climatology at the University of Ljubljana. Her current research includes climate change sce-narios and impacts on ecosystems and human well-being. In 2008 she was elected Vice Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), having participated in its work

since 2002. She served as Vice Chair of Working Group II for the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report and was one of the review editors of the IPCC Fifth As-sessment Report. She has participated in dozens of outreach events related to the IPCC’s work.

Kajfez Bogataj was also a member of the GCOS (Global Climate Observa-tion System) Steering Committee at the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), where she acted as a link between GCOS and IPCC. Currently she is a member of the GWP (Global Water Partnership) Steering Committee. In 2016 she also became a member of the UNESCO Ad Hoc Expert Group on the Declaration on Ethical Principles in Relation to Climate Change. She has also been invited to many national and international conferences and TV programs to serve as an expert on climate change and its effects on the environment, sustainable development, and social justice.

Vigor Majic is founder and director of the Petnica Science Center which is the biggest European and the leading regional organization specialized in parallel-to-school training and sup-port of teenagers and students highly interested in sciences and modern technologies. He is formally trained in geosciences and environmental studies, but he gave much more contribu-

tion in the areas of general education, educational policy development, science teaching and school administration. During 2001-2002 he served as Deputy

Tuesday, September 18Yugoslav Film Archive Museum

Minister of Education of Serbia. In 2014-15 he took position of the Governor of Rotary District Serbia-Montenegro which at that time was focused on local and regional disaster relief activities and projects after catastrophic floods. He is also highly experienced in various training projects including training of teach-ers, state administration officers and other professionals.

Panos Gianopoulos holds a BSc in Physics and an MSc in Meteorology from the University of Athens, Greece. He is a meteorologist-forecaster at the Hellenic National Meteoro-logical Service.  For many years he has served as a weather broadcaster for Greek Public TV (ERT) or for the private media company Real FM/Real News. He is a member of the Greek Me-

teorological Society (EMTE), serves on the Board of Directors of the Interna-tional Association of Broadcast Meteorology (IABM), is a founding member of Climate Without Borders, and is a Fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society (FRMetS). He was formerly a member of the expert team on Public Weather Services for the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO).

A member of the Working Group for the Cooperation of European Forecast-ers (WGCEF) since 2006 and of the Selection Committee for the  EMS TV Weather Forecast Award from 2014 to 2018, he has presented his research at European Meteorological Society (EMS) meetings.

SESSION 7 Seismic Risk in Multi-Family Apartment Buildings: Engineering, Social, Financial, and Policy Implications

9:00–10:30 Room A

Between 1960 and 1990, many countries across Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia responded to shortages in housing by mass-producing prefabri-cated large panel buildings. Today, many of these buildings have outlived their design life span and suffer from deterioration and poor maintenance. In ad-dition, the buildings are not designed to modern seismic code standards, and their seismic vulnerability is not well understood. The issues of seismic safety are also compounded by the fact that many apartments have been reconfig-ured by the owners through the removal of load-bearing walls.

This session will highlight recent projects and advances in understanding the seismic risk of pre-1990s multi-family buildings, with a focus on the Balkan region. It will address social and financial challenges associated with risk re-duction in these buildings and explore potential intervention strategies. Finally, the session will examine the link between seismic strengthening and energy efficiency improvements.

Moderator

Alanna Simpson, Senior Disaster Risk Management Specialist, World Bank

Speakers

Ashna Mathema, Senior Urban Development Specialist, World Bank

Anton Andonov, Technical Director, Mott MacDonald Group, Sofia

Radu Vacareanu, Professor of Structural Reliability and Risk Analysis, Technical University of Civil Engineering, Bucharest

Marianna Ercolino, Senior Lecturer, Department of Engineering Science, University of Greenwich, London

Ron Takiguchi, Assistant Community Development Department Director, the City of Burbank, USA (TBC)

Wednesday, September 19Yugoslav Film Archive Museum

Wednesday, September 19

SESSION 8 Getting Informed: Disaster and Climate Risk Tools for Improved Decision Making

9:00–10:30 Room B

This session will highlight where disaster risk assessments have taken limitations into consideration and grown more sophisticated, with efforts to model the evolution of risk. It will engage with a technologist, Earthquake Engineer, Environmental Engineer, and urban planner participating in the complex network of disaster and climate risk information delivery, highlighting different disaster and climate risk tools currently being utilized in a variety of urban landscapes, and a variety of approaches that can support decision-making, facilitate action, and clearly communicate risks across Governments and communities. For example, the real-time monitoring from space of natural hazards such as cyclones, floods, drought and volcanoes provides us with reliable and actionable information that is end-user friendly for planners, technical experts, farmers, air traffic, and others; in other words, for all of society. Such information – like that supported by Sentinel Hub – can provide the foundation for decisions that determine how cities are planned, how communications and transport function, how farmers plant and harvest, the productivity of fisheries, public health planning and decision-making, and many other critical areas of development planning.

Moderator

Elif Ayhan, Senior Disaster Risk Management Specialist, World Bank

Speakers

Mustafa Erdik, Professor Emeritus, Bogazici University

Matej Batic, EO Research Team Leader, Sinergise

Albert Schwingshandl, Founder and CEO, RIOCOM

Discussant

Zaklina Gligorijevic, Lead Planner, Strategic Planning Department, Belgrade Urban Planning Institute

SESSION 9 Integrating Risk Assessments in Road Asset Management

11:00–12:30 Room A

Road authorities in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Serbia are trying to launch network-wide risk assessments as part of the basis for mainstreaming climate change in road asset management. On top of resource limitations, road authorities are challenged by limitations in data availability, georeferenced road network information, and data collection and sharing protocols. So how can they benefit from risk assessment methodologies developed in the European Union, New Zealand, and the United States, which require a plethora of data and capacity? What kind of risk assessment methodologies can the Western Balkans develop to make sure they are implementable? Can we simplify them without undermining the relevance of the assessment? What do countries need to work on to ensure these assessments will be done in necessary intervals and become a regular element of road asset management? As these countries develop their road asset management systems, how can they efficiently include recommendations from risk assessments, considering the limitation in resources? How will prioritization be done?

The session will present key elements of the risk assessment approaches developed in the Western Balkans, discuss key bottlenecks in the current constrained environment, and explore how road asset management systems will be enhanced to include risk assessments. It will also showcase key elements of the technical assistance ongoing in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Serbia to integrate risk assessment in road asset management.

Speakers

Sarah Reeves, Climate Resilience Specialist, TRL Ltd, UK

Senad Smajlovic, Engineer, Public Enterprise Roads of Federation Bosnia and Herzegovnia, Bosnia and Herzegovnia

Biljana Abolmasov, Professor, Faculty of Geology and Mining, University of Belgrade, Serbia

Yugoslav Film Archive Museum

Wednesday, September 19

SESSION 10 Advancing the State of Open Data and Its Use for DRM in the Balkans

11:00–12:30 Room B

A lack of information is often cited as one of the main barriers to disaster risk management (DRM) in the Balkans. But what is the actual extent of this data gap? What can we do to address it? And how can we make sure data are effectively and rightly used once made available?

This session will start with an introduction to the Open Data for Resilience Index, a global effort to track natural hazard data availability and ease of use around the world. Speakers will then be invited to discuss preliminary results for the Balkans, the impact of this data-constrained environment on their projects, and changes that could improve the state and use of open data for better DRM. This session will bring together the perspectives of disaster management and risk communication experts, policy makers, and open data specialists from several Balkan and neighboring countries, including Romania, Greece, and Serbia, as well as preliminary insights from the European Program for Disaster Risk Assessment and Mapping in the Western Balkans and Turkey.

This session will be also an opportunity to reflect on the data framework in the European Union, including the Public Sector Information and INSPIRE Directives, and on how it could be leveraged to advance the state of open data and its use for disaster risk management in the Balkans.

Moderator

Maryia Markhvida, Doctoral Student, Stanford Urban Resilience Initiative

Speakers

Pierre Chrzanowski, Data Specialist, Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR)

Stella Karafagka, Researcher, Soil Dynamics and Geotechnical Earthquake Engineering, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki

Georgiana Ilie, Reporter and Senior Editor, DoR Magazine, Romania

Roberto Rudari, Research Director, CIMA Research Foundation

SESSION 11 Enhancing Resilience: From City to Asset Scale14:00–15:30 Room A

The technical session will focus on tools and approaches for enhancing resilience and case studies of their adoption. This will be a practical session on how risk fits into the wider context of resilience. The session will cover different scales of resilience from individual asset to city resilience:

• Resilience of the Corridor X Highway Project and other infrastructure in the Western Balkans—measures taken to strengthen environmental and social performance

• The World Bank Urban Rail Design Guidebook—Practical guidance on embedding resilience to climate and natural hazards in urban rail projects;

• City resilience, giving specific examples of implementation of the City Resilience Index—the first comprehensive tool for cities to understand and assess their resilience, enhancing their ability to build sound strategies and plans for a strong future;

• The Resilience Shift—a global initiative to re-orient professional practice from a focus on infrastructure as an asset, to a focus on infrastructure as part of a system that provides services under both ordinary and extraordinary circumstances and the role tools and approaches can play in enhancing resilience.

Moderator

Savina Carluccio, Project lead on the Resilience Shift, Arup

Speakers

Aleksandar Bajovic, Leader of the Belgrade Office, Arup

Áine Ní Bhreasail, Senior Engineer, Arup

Sachin Bhoite, Associate in International Development, Arup

Savina Carluccio, Project lead on the Resilience Shift, Arup

Yugoslav Film Archive Museum

Wednesday, September 19

SESSION 12 From Assessing Risk to Managing Risk: The Science-Policy Interface

14:00–15:30 Room B

Ensuring the prevention and reduction of disaster risks relies on a robust knowledge base on disaster risks and efficient sharing of knowledge, best practices and information. Strong knowledge on disaster risks and the contribution of science are important for countries to undertake risk assessments, assess their risk management capabilities and to prepare their risk management plans.

Disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation are intrinsically linked in reducing risks and vulnerabilities to climate-related hazards. Both rely on the availability of robust knowledge and data at all levels. Knowledge and data are key in defining scenarios and projections according to which adaptation measures are developed, in monitoring progress of implementation and in developing innovative instruments/tools to increase resilience.

Building sound knowledge on DRR and CCA is strongly dependent on improving the recording of loss and damage data, which relies on robust systems, models and methodologies. Science will help improve the understanding of risks and the undertaking of the vital first steps towards DRM and adaptation planning.

Moderator

Montserrat Marin Ferrer, Scientific Project Manager, European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC)

Speakers

Aslan Mehmet Coskun, Planning and Mitigation Branch Manager, TEKIRDAG AFAD

Marco Massabò, Programme Director, CIMA Research Foundation, Italy

Boris Erg, Director, IUCN Regional Office for Eastern Europe and Central Asia (ECARO)

Keynote Closing

16:00–16:30 Auditorium

Design Scientist and Systems Theorist Melissa Sterry is an authority on the science, technology, and thinking aimed at building a brighter future. Specializing in futures in the built environment, utilities, manufacturing, engineering, design, publishing, media, and communications, she has spent her career working with leading-edge researchers and practitioners

worldwide. She has received several national and international awards for innovation, creativity, and enterprise, including the Mensa Education and Research Foundation International Award for Benefit to Society,

She has been a visiting/guest lecturer, visiting fellow, workshop host, master’s thesis supervisor, and guest critic at several European architecture and design research institutes, including the Bartlett School of Architecture (University College London), the University of Salford School of the Built Environment, and the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia.

Sterry is the founder and director of Bionic City,® an initiative that asks how nature would design a city and that explores the potential of biomimetics, biotechnology, and biology in the built environment. Bionic City® has attracted a global community of interest and has collaboration and cocreation partners worldwide.

Sterry’s work has appeared in international scientific, industry, and consumer publications, including the Global Innovation Science Handbook, for which she authored the chapter on biomimetics. She has also served as a committee member, peer reviewer, and editorial board member to several journals, conferences, societies, and awards. She is the founder of the sustainability think tank and collaborative laboratory Societás; cocreator of New Frontiers, a sustainable design initiative; and cofounder of the world’s first online international visual arts awards, the Creative Graduate Prize and the Iconique Societás Awards.

Yugoslav Film Archive Museum

Closing Remarks

16:30–17:00 Auditorium

Co

ve

r p

ho

to: E

SA

www.understandrisk.org